NASA taps U. professor to seek life on other

The Nobel Prize winner will direct an institute looking for evidence of life in space. While he may not find E.T. in the near future, Baruch Blumberg, a Penn professor of medicine and anthropology, could soon discover that extraterrestrial-life really does exist after all. Blumberg, a renowned biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for his work in identifying the hepatitis B vaccine, was appointed last month to direct the NASA Astrobiology Institute -- a year-old collaborative program designed to study both the origins and future of life on Earth and detect traces of intelligent life forms throughout the entire universe. Blumberg -- a Distinguished Scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in northeast Philadelphia -- will head a group of researchers at 11 different institutions across the country, including Harvard, the University of California at Los Angeles and Penn State University. Penn does not have a similar research center and is not one of the 11 participating universities. The institute, based at the NASA Ames Research Center, in Mollett Field, Calif., named Blumberg as its first director. Blumberg said much of the research will focus on existing organisms -- particularly those that live in seemingly uninhabitable environments -- in an attempt to discern whether life could exist elsewhere in the universe under similiarly extreme conditions. Scientists have, for example, discovered bacteria living underneath the Earth's surface in extremely cold temperatures, which experts say could suggest that subterranean life exists in Mars -- a planet believed by some to have once been covered with liquid water -- as well. Although Blumberg acknowledged that he could not guarantee exactly what he and his fellow researchers would discover, he did say that the scientists will undoubtedly "make interesting discoveries." "The evidence is strong enough to make us want to try to find out [if extraterrestrial life exists]," Blumberg said. Each of the 11 research groups will work independently at their respective laboratories but will work toward common goals, Blumberg said. One such group is examining pre-RNA life, another is studying fossil records, while others are looking at gravity's effect on terrestrial metabolism. Specifically, NASA researchers are also performing extensive research in outer space. A Mars orbiter and Mars lander will be launched approximately every two years and a Europa Orbiter mission -- which will explore one of Jupiter's moon -- are just two of the planned outings. The scientists' research will be published continuously, Blumberg said. Introducing the new director at a press conference last month, NASA administrator Daniel Goldin praised Blumberg's "scholarship, experience and accomplishment." "I am delighted that he has joined the NASA team to lead our visionary program in astrobiology," Goldin said. And although Blumberg is himself a renowned scientist with more than 40 years of research experience, he said he does not plan to be a heavy-handed director in any way. "The important thing is to allow scientists to generate their own ideas and follow through on them," Blumberg said. Blumberg said he was not entirely sure why he was chosen to head the mission, but hypothesized that it may be due to his "many years of experience in medical and biological research." He gained renown in the 1960s after his groundbreaking discovery of the hepatitis B vaccine while conducting research in Australia. After receiving his M.D. degree from Columbia University in 1951, he went on to earn his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1957. He then joined the staff of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., that same year -- a position that he held for the following seven years. In 1993, he was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.